A Personal Blog Is What You Make It To Be

Everyone blogs, or at least that is the way it seems - the internet if full of millions of blogs covering just about every subject under the sun (and even some that are not!). The internet has been in existence for 40 years and although it seems much longer, blogging has been around for a little over 10 - something people find hard to believe when the see how widespread its popularity is. Blogs, or web logs to give them their full name, began in the late 1990s as posts of personal information and opinions by individuals - thus the term "log" as in log book or record. The first blogs to ever appear were personal blogs where people gave public voice to their opinions and thoughts and the majority of blogs today are still personal ones.


A major hurdle for many new bloggers is that they do not know what subject to choose for their blogs because the do not know what subjects are already over exposed and what new subjects people will want to read about. These questions have answers that are very simple - bloggers can write about anything they have strong opinions on which they want to share with the world and as to the matter of whether there will be readers, the fact is that the internet has people of every kind, opinion and taste and whatever comes out in a personal blog will find people who will read it and respond. A personal blog is often used as a vehicle for spreading awareness about little known issues the blogger is concerned about. This does not mean writing about things that are not well known, although blogs are often used to create interest in subjects that the blogger feels are being overlooked or ignored. Personal blogs are also used to spread awareness of what the blogger thinks are unseen, unappreciated or deliberately concealed aspects of issues of popular concerns as can be seen by the huge number of blogs that comment on what the authors think are hidden aspects of things like the war, the recession, the World Series, The failure of Pakistan as a nation and so on.


It is possible to make a living by being a blogger and a successful personal blog that because of the subject it covers or the style of the author, the type of discussion it generates, the people who respond to it or for any other reason has a large readership can sell advertising space and make money for the author. Personal blogs are powerful tools for spreading news as can be seen from the fact that it was through blogs that the outside world came to know about the crack down on political protestors in Iran when foreign media was banned from the country. Money making and social responsibility are secondary aspects - the main function of a personal blog is to allow the blogger to have his say.